Tanya Richardson

Tanya Richardson is an Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts at Wilfrid Laurier University. She received her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 2005 and her BA in Anthropology from the University of British Columbia in 1995. Prior to joining Laurier, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University (2005-2006) and at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany (2005).

Her research spans environmental anthropology, multispecies ethnography, and Ukrainian studies, with particular focus on the Black Sea Coast, Odesa, and Danube Delta regions. Richardson's work examines how places and landscapes acquire identities through changing political, economic, and ecological relations. She has published extensively on urban place-making practices, environmental politics, and human-environment relations in Ukraine.

Her recent research focuses on apiculture (beekeeping) in Ukraine and the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on ecological systems and interspecies relations. Richardson's publications reveal a consistent interest in how environmental governance, infrastructure, and conservation practices intersect with local livelihoods and cultural identities in post-Soviet contexts.

Richardson is fluent in English, Russian, and Ukrainian, which supports her extensive field research in Ukraine. She has developed expertise in amphibious anthropology, political ecology, and multispecies studies, with publications spanning environmental humanities, materiality studies, and post-socialist transformations.